First published 2018
Miranda Schuyler arrives on Winthrop Island in 1951 as a war orphan whose mother has married into the Fisher family's privileged world. The island divides between wealthy summer residents and Portuguese fishermen who serve them. Miranda struggles to fit among her new stepsister Isobel's elite friends and finds herself drawn to Joseph Vargas, the lighthouse keeper's son who attends Brown University. Joseph maintains a complicated friendship with Isobel that spans their childhood. As summer ends, catastrophe strikes when Miranda's stepfather dies and Joseph faces murder charges, destroying the island's carefully maintained peace. Miranda flees and doesn't return for eighteen years. In 1969, she comes back as a successful Shakespearean actress nursing private grief. The Fisher family has lost its former influence while Joseph has just been released from prison. Miranda launches a determined investigation to prove Joseph's innocence, knowing she must expose the buried secrets that have shaped Winthrop Island's most powerful families for decades.
Genres: romance, historical-fiction, 20th-century, mystery, 21st-century, family-drama
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, intimate, suspenseful
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family, second-chance
Setting: Winthrop Island
Period: 1951, 1969
Hardcover · William Morrow
Content warnings: death, murder